The Shock of the Now - Issue #69
Afternoon All,
I hope you’re all well and welcome to Issue 69 of The Shock of the Now.
There isn’t a Featured Text this week, but rather a bumper pack of Recommended Exhibitions, including much anticipated solo exhibitions from Jonathan Baldock, Jenkin van Zyl, Elliot Jeffries & Emily Pope, the relocation of Saatchi Yates to Bury St and stellar group exhibition line-ups at Rose Easton and Sherbet Green!
Alongside, there are more Artist Opportunities, with seven fresh listings.
I hope you enjoy Issue 69, and if so do forward it along! As always any questions, comments or feedback are welcome, so feel free to get in touch.
All the best, and speak soon, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week:
‘On the edge of fashion’ Group Exhibition - Rose Easton, Bethnal Green (19th January - 25th February, opening Wednesday 18th January, 6-8pm)
Rose Easton presents ‘On the edge of fashion’, a group exhibition of new works from Arlette, Alfa Bransfield, Aaron Ford, Jonah Pontzer and Mary Stephenson.
‘Into My Arms’ Group Exhibition - Sherbet Green, Bethnal Green (19th January - 3rd March, opening Wednesday 18th January, 6-9pm)
Sherbet Green presents ‘Into My Arms’, a group exhibition featuring Sonya Derviz, My-Lan Hoang-Thuy, Shamiran Istifan and Li Li Ren.
“From the ether, the gentle uncanny. Glimpses seemingly through windows; angelic figures in a state of embrace; stalactites congealing on electric chorals: the phantasmagoric particles of life on earth. A never-ending history of surrealism, modernised and mechanised. Across painting and sculpture, Derviz, Hoang-Thuy, Istifan and Ren look to comfort, voyeurism and the spiritual as inexplicable embellishments of the mundane, constant renegotiations of situation, mind and body.” - Sherbet Green
Jonathan Baldock - ‘we are flowers of one garden’ Solo Exhibition - Stephen Friedman, Mayfair (20th January - 25th February, opening Thursday 19th January, 6-8pm)
Stephen Friedman presents Jonathan Baldock’s latest solo exhibition ‘we are flowers of one garden’.
“Centred on themes of nature and the cycle of life, this highly personal exhibition draws inspiration from Baldock’s relationship with his mother and her garden. The artist brings together a new body of work comprising ceramics and wall-based sculptures. Baldock examines the spectrum of human emotion, brutally and blissfully reflecting on what it means to be alive and how we find our place on Earth.” - Stephen Friedman
Alongside, Stephen Friedman presents Stephan Balkenhol’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.
Jenkin van Zyl - ‘Surrender’ Solo Exhibition & Si On - ‘A Peace Brimful with Malice’ Solo Exhibition - Edel Assanti, Fitzrovia (19th January - 4th March, opening Thursday 19th January, 6-8pm)
Edel Assanti presents Jenkin van Zyl's latest solo exhibition ‘Surrender’, and Si On latest solo exhibition ‘A Peace Brimful with Malice’.
“Jenkin van Zyl transforms the gallery into an engulfing environment built around a new single-channel film, Surrender. The exhibition is entered via the gaping jaws of an enormous inflatable rat sculpture, whose fleshy innards create a sculptural walkway leading to the inner sanctum of a love hotel, festooned with a canopy of bunting. At the centre of the installation, three beds mirroring one of the scenes from Van Zyl’s film serve as a viewing platform for the projection.
Meanwhile, Si On's practice takes forms ranging from hallucinant monumental painting to hulking sculptures melted with a soldering iron, alongside overbearing installations formed from swathes of second-hand fabric and clothing. Si On’s characters exist in vibrantly hypnotic landscapes that serve to mirror their inhabitants' transcendent states. Despite the otherworldly aesthetic of her work, Si On’s subjects are universal human emotions, often focusing on extreme psychological states and their underlying triggers: personal trauma, sociocultural tension and political unrest.” - Edel Assanti
Hannah Beerman - ‘Call me if you get lost’ Solo Exhibition - Claas Reiss, Euston & Konstantinos Argyroglou - ‘Re-touching Memory’ Solo Exhibition - Projektraum London (19th January - 4th March, opening Thursday 19th January, 5-8pm)
Claas Reiss presents Hannah Beerman’s debut UK solo exhibition ‘Call me if you get lost’, alongside Konstantinos Argyroglou’s debut solo exhibition in the gallery’s Projektraum London space.
“Outfitted with the likes of seashells, inhalers and jaggedly cut images of neoclassical people with their yearning, seraphic eyes, Hannah Beerman’s work is unabashedly brimming over, spilling out and tumbling forth. Loosely restrained by a limp fishnet or bound by an austere gang of jacket zippers, the pieces are pointedly animate—incapable of being managed or contained, teasing at crawling off of the canvas altogether when no one is looking.” - Natalie Power
“Touch and memory make up the foundations of Konstantinos Argyroglou’s temple of painting. His is a practice that seeks to feel remembered moments from his childhood: some clear, others foggy; some comforting, others challenging with such moments offering a condensation of sensation; physically, psychologically and painterly. Touch and memory propose themselves as binary antagonists in a delicious oxymoron. One cannot touch impalpable memories. Haptics betray different truths to those evoked by anamnesis; memory being that tapestry of essence and sentiment wittingly recalled yet inexorably imagined.” - Matt Carey-Williams
Elliot Jeffries - ‘sleep/no sleep’ Solo Exhibition - Coups Contemporary, Fitzrovia (19th January - 18th February, opening Thursday 19th January, 6-9pm)
Coups Contemporary presents Elliot Jeffries’ debut solo exhibition ‘sleep/no sleep’.
“The room is split in two by a construction site hoarding, painted in Go Away Green, a blanket term for a series of colours used by Disney to disguise parts of their park’s infrastructure. A single panel from an LED video wall plays a small fragment of an advert playing concurrently at Piccadilly Circus, lighting the space. The floor is covered with Magic Ice Melt SPP 100, a synthetic salt used by railways combative of icy platforms in low temperatures. This specific adaptation of salt does not impair the rail itself as a standard grit might.” - Coups Contemporary
Benjamin Fitton - ‘Aspirational Bucolics’ Solo Exhibition - Lungley Gallery, Fitzrovia (19th January - 25th February, opening Thursday 19th January, 6-9pm)
Lungley Gallery presents Benjamin Fitton's latest solo exhibition ‘Aspirational Bucolics’.
“A pastoral scene has been rendered in damp, earthy tones: a geofenced Old English Longhorn is turning to avert her gaze from that of a passing human. To the side, she notes what she assumes to be the back of a friend or an associate or a coworker or something, barely visible to her above the long grass they are employed to maintain at the behest of the City of London. Nearby, all trace of a person crouching in sparse woodland to photograph a smattering or a carpet or a sea of bluebells has been effaced from another image with the assistance of a neural filter.” - Lungley Gallery
Emily Pope - ‘Poison Pen’ Solo Exhibition - Ginny on Frederick, Farringdon (21st January - 25th February, opening Saturday 21st January, 5-8pm)
Ginny on Frederick presents Emily Pope’s latest solo exhibition ‘Poison Pen’.
Omar El Lahib - Solo Exhibition - Saatchi Yates, St James’s (23rd January - 15th March, opening Monday 23rd March)
Saatchi Yates presents Omar El Lahib’s latest solo exhibition, the first presentation at the gallery’s new Bury St space.
“Bringing together over 18 large-scale paintings, El Lahib’s solo exhibition sets itself in the nocturnal world where darkness reigns, the mysterious takes shape, and where the unconscious is at liberty to make itself heard. Lahib’s paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction. These dreamscapes arise from simple sketches, occasionally from earlier pictures the artist could not absolve.” - Saatchi Yates
Artist Opportunities:
Open Call, V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography. Deadline - Sunday 22nd January.
The V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography is an exciting new annual initiative dedicated to identifying, supporting, and championing innovative women artists working in the field of contemporary photography. Successful photographers will be selected by an independent selection panel consisting of global industry professionals and inspiring international artists. Our selectors will identify a shortlist of ten artists, with five selected for a group exhibition at the Peckham 24 photography festival in May 2023. Each shortlisted artist will receive a bursary of £2,000 each and participate in scheduled networking events to support career development. The V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography is free to enter, open to all women internationally; both professionals and amateurs.
Open Call, a space arts, International Women’s Day 2023. Deadline - Monday 23rd January.
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2023, ‘a space’ arts are inviting contributions to a silent auction of artworks by female-identifying and non-binary artists, with a six-week exhibition at their flagship venue, God’s House Tower (GHT). Each contributor will create an A4 image, which could be a photograph, a drawing, a print, a collage or a printed digital artwork inspired by a female-identifying artist who has influenced them. To accompany the artwork, participants will be asked to write 50 -100 words about their chosen artist. These artworks will be exhibited at GHT from 8th March – 16th April, launching on International Women’s Day. During that time, visitors will be able to bid in a silent auction to buy any of the works. For each artwork sold 50% of the proceeds will go to the artist who made the work and 50% will be donated to Yellow Door, a Southampton-based charity that prevents and responds to domestic and sexual abuse.
Call for Submissions, TAPE Collective ‘Free To Forage’. Deadline - Friday 27th January.
As Free To Forage begins its journey, TAPE Collective are inviting creatives of mixed heritage to share their pitches and reflections on working with nature. A curated selection of submissions will then become part of a digital zine in 2023, as TAPE launch an open-source directory to serve as a resource for those ready to forage. All art forms are accepted. Selected submissions will be paid £100-£180, dependent on size/style of work.
Open Call, The Blunden Prize, Stonewater. Deadline - Friday 27th January.
Stonewater is re-launching its public art prize for 2022/23 to give artists from all over the country, both established and emerging, the chance to deliver a series of pieces that can sit proudly on Stonewater development schemes. Applications are invited from artists from all disciplines, to pitch their ideas for the chance to win five public art commissions that will feature across Stonewater developments and a prize of £75,000.
Open Call, Spike Island Commission for South West-based Artists. Deadline - Monday 30th January.
Spike Island is pleased to invite applications from artists based in the South West of England to develop a major new commission to be presented in their main galleries in summer 2024. This is an exciting opportunity for an artist to create new work that they otherwise may not be able to make. The successful candidate will work closely with Spike Island’s curatorial staff to develop and produce the commission.
The successful applicant will receive: An artist fee of £4,000; A £10,000 budget to produce and fabricate the new commission. Spike Island will cover all other exhibition-related costs including installation, transport, insurance, travel and accommodation, per diems, documentation and take down; Support from Spike Island’s Programme and Technical teams to develop, produce and present the commission; Significant promotion via Spike Island’s website and social media channels before and during the exhibition, which will open to the public in summer 2024.
Open Call, Kensington + Chelsea Art Week Art Trail. Deadline - Monday 30th January.
The Kensington + Chelsea Art Week (KCAW) is inviting artists, creative organisations and curators to submit sculptural (3-D) installations for the 6th Edition of KCAW Public Art Trail. Selected works will be displayed in a variety of public spaces across Kensington and Chelsea for the duration of the Summer 2023. They encourage artists of all backgrounds and at varying stages of their careers to apply to the Open Call and to observe the overarching festival theme of 2023: ‘THE ART OF CHANGE’.
Open Call, Artists in Residence, Kunstraum Schwaz, Austria. Deadline - Tuesday 31st January.
The city of Schwaz in Tyrol, Austria will be granting a residency to professional visual artists, media artists and curators in 2023. The residency hopes to foster an intercultural dialogue in which the artistic process, research and production can be explored in juxtaposition with local themes. Studio visits, networking and trips to cultural institutions will be facilitated through a partnership with Kunstraum Schwaz. The residency will be launched with a “lunch presentation” to introduce the selected project. An artist talk will also be arranged towards the end of the residency. A studio apartment as well as a studio/workroom will be available to the resident for a minimum of 4 to a maximum of 8 weeks. Additional to accommodation and studio facilities, the city of Schwaz will issue a stipend of €1,500 per month over the duration of the residency to support artistic activities, up to a maximum of €3,000 over a two-month stay. A travel subsidy of up to €200 is also available.
Open Call, New Curators. Deadline - Sunday 5th February.
New Curators is a paid twelve-month curatorial training programme based in London for individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The programme is divided into five strands: Academic seminars in curatorial theory and practice and art history; Skills training covering essential topics such as writing for different audiences, public speaking, budgeting and fundraising; Network development meetings with a wide range of curators, artists and arts professions and regular studio, gallery and museum visits in the UK and internationally; Exhibition-making extensive practical experience working collaboratively on exhibitions, publications and public programmes; Coaching and mentorship participants will be mentored and have access to regular individual and group coaching sessions. New Curators will be physically located at the South London Gallery in its buildings in Camberwell and Peckham. The South London Gallery will also present the first exhibition in Summer 2024.
Open Call, 20/20, UAL Decolonising Arts Institute. Deadline - Monday 6th February.
20/20 is an ambitious 3-year programme that will engage 20 emerging or mid-career ethnically diverse artists of colour and 20 public art collections across the UK, resulting in 20 new permanent acquisitions. Generously supported by Arts Council England, Freelands Foundation and UAL, 20/20 combines artist residencies and commissioning at scale, with the aim of catalysing artists’ careers and fostering meaningful change in collections – not only through the artworks that will ultimately enter the collections but also through peer networks of artists and curators, and the critical interrogation of collection practices. The first cohort of 8 artists took up their residencies in autumn 2022. This is the second and final open call for expressions of interest, and selected artists will take up their residencies in spring 2023.
Open Call, NOHAT Exhibition, Broadway Gallery, Letchworth. Deadline - Monday 6th February.
NOHAT are looking for work by female artists for our upcoming group exhibition hosted by Broadway Gallery, Letchworth UK on the theme of SPACE, PLACE, and how we RELATE to it. “Some ideas for starters: Psychogeography. Our bodies in relation to our environment. Who is the urban landscape built for? Us and the countryside and nature. Power over place. Ownership of space. Trespass/Access. Public/Private. How place shapes thoughts. "A woman's place". Know your place. Headspace. Outer space...”. The exhibition will take place between 28th April and 3rd June 2023. NOHAT will consider all media including painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, video, installation, sound etc. Open to all artists who identify as female, irrespective of age/location.
Open Call, Incubating Residency, Pictorum Gallery. Deadline - Thursday 9th February.
Applications are now open for the next round in Pictorum Gallery London’s Incubating Residency. The residency will run from February 13th until April 10th, and we will be offering six artists free studio space in the gallery’s 3553 square foot basement on Great Titchfield Street. Studios will be available Monday – Sunday, every week. The chosen artists will receive a £300 stipend each for materials. Each artist will be requested to donate an artwork to the Pictorum Collection that is representative of their practice.
Open Call, Stuart Hall Library Artist Residency, Institute of International Visual Arts. Deadline - Sunday 12th February.
iniva and the Stuart Hall Foundation are pleased to announce the sixth Stuart Hall Library Artist’s Residency commencing in May 2023. This residency is a funded opportunity for an artist based in the UK to be in residence at iniva’s Stuart Hall Library over a three-month period from May to July 2023. The selected artist will receive a total sum of £4,750 and given support to pursue their research in the library. Professor Stuart Hall (1932 – 2014) was actively engaged in the arts throughout his life, and in particular the visual arts. He championed the establishment of iniva and chaired its board for more than a decade. Professor Stuart Hall worked closely with artists, filmmakers and photographers, writing about the visual arts, informing critical thinking and influencing public policy on arts education.
Open Call, Summer Exhibition 2023, Royal Academy of Arts. Deadline - Tuesday 14th February.
The world’s largest open submission exhibition is back, featuring work in every medium imaginable. The Summer Exhibition is the Royal Academy of Arts annual celebration of art and artists, run without interruption since 1769. Anyone can submit their work and – if your work is selected by their panel of artists – it will go on display in our Main Galleries. This year, celebrated British painter David Remfry RA takes the reins as exhibition co-ordinator. Remfry’s Summer Exhibition will explore the theme Only Connect, taken from the famous quote in Howards End by E.M. Forster. The Summer Exhibition shows every imaginable medium – from prints, paintings, film and photography to sculpture, architectural works and more – by leading artists, Royal Academicians and household names as well as new and emerging talent. Most of the works are available to buy and sales from the Summer Exhibition directly support the exhibiting artists and the RA’s charitable work, including training the next generation of artists in the Royal Academy Schools.
Open Call, Photoworks Writer in Residence 2023. Deadline - Monday 20th February.
Photography+ is Photoworks’ quarterly online magazine. Read by international audiences, the digital publication showcases new writing, imagery, and perspectives on photography. Each issue focuses on a different theme, exploring how photography crosses over with everyday life. Photoworks would like to appoint a Writer in Residence for 2023 to contribute to four issues of Photography+. This role includes working closely with the editor to deliver four articles of approximately 1000 words. The successful writer should have a working knowledge of contemporary photography as well as a willingness to look beyond photography for inspiration. This opportunity suits an early-career writer looking to gain experience writing and publishing online. Photoworks is based in the UK, but writers are welcome to apply from all over the world. This is a paid residency with a fee of £300 per article, with expected outputs of four articles plus online or in-person meetings with the Photoworks team. The opportunity is open to all and runs from March 2023 to February 2024.
Open Call, New Contemporaries 2023. Deadline - Monday 20th February.
New Contemporaries welcome submissions from emerging and early career artists who are final-year students, recent graduates and post-graduate students from UK art schools and alternative learning programmes. New Contemporaries are committed to inclusion and equal opportunities and encourage submissions from artists of all backgrounds, ages, genders, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, and from those who identify as having a disability.
Being selected for New Contemporaries programme includes: Exhibiting as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023 at Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, opening in September, and Camden Art Centre, which will open in December; Participating in New Contemporaries Bridget Riley Artists’ Development Programme; Contributing to our Digital Programme and the opportunity to present work on their channels; Being eligible, as NC alumni, for Studio Bursaries, Residencies, Fellowships, Scholarships and other opportunities; Being part of a network of other participating artists and previous alumni that spans over 70 years.
Personal Projects:
I’m pleased to announce my latest curatorial project, Eleanor McLean’s upcoming solo exhibition ‘Promise’ at Robert Young Antiques in Battersea. The presentation is the latest in their series of ‘Contemporary Collaborations: INVITES’ exhibitions, which sees emerging and early-career artists respond to an object of inspiration from the dealer’s expansive collection of folk art and antique furniture, and follows in the footsteps of exhibitions by Andrew Pierre Hart, Luke Burton, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Victor Seaward and Rosie Reed.
‘Promise’ will be on display from Monday 30th January, until Saturday 18th February, with an opening reception on Thursday 2nd February, 6-8pm.
It’s been a pleasure to collaborate with Eleanor on this project for the past few months. Our thanks to Robert, Flo and Ilse at Robert Young Antiques for their hospitality, Erin and James for their continued support, and Ted for the poster design!
“Eleanor McLean, a recent graduate of the neighbouring Royal College of Art’s MA Sculpture programme, uses cathartic craft-based processes such as tufting and ceramics, alongside complementary creative writing, to create sculptural installations evoking collective memory or personal nostalgia. Often employing found objects or researched references, she investigates how each becomes romanticised and sentimentally assimilated into popular culture and society. For her solo exhibition ‘Promise’, McLean turns her attention to a Scandinavian marriage chest, selected from the Robert Young Antiques’ collection and displayed as part of the presentation.”